mobanmarketWhile it’s a distant memory now that he’s making mediocre albums and using his US website to sell $50 T-shirts for gigs in Helsinki, there was a time when Bruce Springsteen had a hungry heart: Hungry to be perceived as a consequential artist. Focused on telling stories and making vivid albums. Alive with conflict and memorable characters. Back in those days, the early 1970s, he broke any number of rules and barriers. In the case of The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, that meant defeating the dreaded sophomore slump.
It’s a music-biz truism that debut albums, particularly the strong ones, tend to be followed by disappointing second efforts. While his first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, was enveloped in tangled lyrical paroxysms and occasionally successful Dylanisms, his second was a much leaner affair. From the opening track, “The E Street Shuffle,” The Wild, The Innocent is full of rock-and folk-inflected R&B. It was the place where the urban scenes of angst-ridden teenage-hood that would power “Jungleland” and “Thunder Road”—both from Born to Run—first began to stir. While it wasn’t especially successful when first released in the fall of 1973, this horn-driven second album has risen in stature to become, in the minds of many longtime fans, his finest blend of youthful exuberance and ambitious songwriting. While Born to Run may have changed more lives and inarguably made him a star, The Wild, The Innocent, and the solemn Nebraska, are his most spiritual and heartfelt masterpieces.
Lines like “Whoa, fat lady, big mama, Missy Bimbo sits in her chair and yawns/And the man-beast lies in his cage sniffin’ popcorn/And the midget licks his fingers and suffers Missy Bimbo’s scorn”—that’s from “Wild Billy’s Circus Story”—show that not all of Bruce’s Dylan fixations, so prominent on Greetings, were out of his system yet. As on the debut, his wordy, rambunctious excess has more than a few breathtaking moments: “Now those E Street brats in twilight duel flash like phantoms in full star stream/Down fire trails on silver nights with blonde girls pledged sweet 16 …” (from “The E Street Shuffle.”) In “Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” the words also show that the writer is maturing: “And me, I just got tired of hangin’ in them dusty arcades, bangin’ them pleasure machines,” before concluding, “For me, this boardwalk life is through babe/You ought to quit this scene too.”
Breaking yet another oft-cited cardinal rule of making albums, the emerging rockstar buries his best stuff, loading the original album’s second side with the record’s three strongest tracks. After “Incident on 57th Street,” one of his first truly successful rock/R&B hybrids, and the immortal “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” he closes with the sweeping, imagistic valentine to NYC, the nearly 10-minute “New York City Serenade.”
As his ultimate anthem and anguished showstopper, the triumphant roar of “Rosalita” is a career highlight. And the majestic “New York City Serenade” is shaped by pianist David Sancious, who adds so much musically to this album. It opens with just acoustic piano followed by some of Springsteen’s most incisive acoustic guitar work. Eloquent singing, a stirring string arrangement that stays on the right side of too saccharine, and some of his finest lyrics make this his most ambitious composition ever. Lyrically, it swings from street wisdom to more signs that this Jersey Boy senses the glow of distant, desirable new horizons.
Musically, there’s an audible leap forward between sides 1 and 2, much of it due to the E Street band perfecting what became its signature sound. Unforgettably pictured on the album’s back cover in full Jersey Shore attitude and duds, the band of Clarence Clemons, Springsteen, David Sancious, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez, Danny Federici, and Garry Tallent morphed on side 2 into a powerful and flexible R&B band, ready to take on the world in 1975’s Born to Run.
The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, like Springsteen’s debut recording, was recorded at 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York. When Jon Landau became Springsteen’s manager in 1975, he moved the band’s recording activity to The Record Plant at 321 W. 44th Street in New York City.
The sound of the two albums recorded at 914 has become a topic of endless debate among audiophiles and Springsteen fans. Some like the funky, homemade sound captured in the less-than-state-of-the-art surroundings of a converted gas station. For others, the sound has always been a significant distraction. This is not to ignore the fact that the Record Plant–recorded Born to Run has its own set of sonic issues.
Happily, Mobile Fidelity’s One-Step process, which has a digital step, has added needed depth and clarity to the second album’s sonic profile. Always a thin and brittle mix, this new reissue adds low end and pushes the vocals further to the front. While the unexceptional source material will always limit improvements, the improvements they managed are audible. The piano opening to “Incident on 57th Street” has more resonance. In “The E Street Shuffle,” the horn-and-drums cacophony, punctuated by Bruce’s high shrieks, is clearer and better separated. And in the euphoric blast “Rosalita,” the late Clarence Clemons’s horn parts stand out more, the muddiness that always plagued the track has been somewhat cleared, and the shouted, now-iconic chant—”Oh, your papa says he knows that I don’t have any money”—has noticeably sharper edges.
Listen again to when Bruce became the Boss.
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